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ARTICLE
The Saving Role of the
Human Christ for St. Teresa
by Rev. Eamon R. Carroll
Introduction
Christianity has lived on the conviction that there is no true Christian prayer without Christ. The Letter to the Hebrews 3:1 reads: "Fix your eyes on Jesus the apostle and high priest whom we acknowledge in faith," and the Carmelite Rule says we are to live "in allegiance to Jesus Christ." One of the all-time greatest defenders of this tradition is St. Teresa of Avila, in her typically forthright style. The theology of this Doctor of the Church was also her experience, in the deepest and most ancient sense of the word "theology" as God-centeredness, but also theology as a human science that fully involves the human person, specifically Teresa’s own polyvalent and rich human personality. The Jesus whose name became attached to Teresa’s when she chose to be known as Teresa of Jesus at her first foundation of St. Joseph is the triumphant victorious Christ of the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Eucharist.
In this study I offer reflections on St. Teresa’s extraordinarily accurate Christology; I say "extraordinary," for, as she was the first to say, Teresa had no theological training as such. A contemporary French Carmelite has written of her "learned lack of learning." Yet along the road of prayer, on the pilgrimage of faith, through all her progress on the "way of perfection" toward the throne room of the King at the center of the many dwelling places of the spiritual life, Teresa learned from the master teacher, Jesus himself. It is another depth to Teresa’s Christology that she saw the achievement of full human potential in union with Christ. We become most properly human beings when in the center of our very selves Christ is enthroned, the human Jesus who is the very Son of God, the revelation of God’s kindness to us in the power of the Spirit. Moreover, this wise woman constantly sought advice from theologians. It is almost embarrassing to me as a theologian to read her words of confidence in their judgment, even when they had not themselves experienced ways of prayer about which their advice was being sought and concerning which they were in fact able to give good advice.1 She also had the experience of confessors who held her back along the ways of prayer because of their ignorance, but, if anything, that sharpened her sense of the importance of learning. And, as is well known, the necessity of good instruction spurred Teresa to write her own great books on prayer. Along the same lines of seeking advice from experts was Teresa’s respect for Church authorities, such as the bishops with whom she had to deal in making her many foundations, and the religious superiors to whom she was in various ways subject.
We recall from her description of the fourth dwelling place how for a bleak period Teresa tried to follow the advice of certain books about prayer— that the humanity of Christ was a hindrance to higher forms of prayer. Her subsequent reaction was "high treason, though done in ignorance." Through the experience of the mystical marriage, as described in The Interior Castle, she realized that the "soul never ceases to walk with Christ," even if no longer through analytic thought and the incessant use of the imagination, factors rightly regarded as keeping the soul from attaining full enlightenment. It is also well-known that when Teresa herself experienced the culminating blessings of the seventh dwelling place, the mystical nuptials, she was granted a special vision of the humanity of Christ, which must be regarded as the formal confirmation of her spiritual marriage.
Life Story
The Spanish "golden age" of the sixteenth century had its dark side in "alumbradismo," with its exaggerated spiritualism, while from beyond the borders of Spain came the challenge of Protestant rejection of many old forms of devotion.
In all her visions and locutions Teresa experienced reference to Jesus Christ. The words to Philip at the Last Supper, "who sees me sees the Father," (Jn 14:9) were axiomatic in Teresa’s life. In her existential openness to the Absolute she kept her balance only in identifying this Absolute with Jesus Christ. The abstract distant God was gradually "concretized" for her in Jesus. She did not simply "put on" Christ, she was transformed into him, a development not from without but from within, Jesus acting in her, at the heart of the interior castle of her personality. The progressive degrees of prayer in her life were stages in grasping Christ, or better, being seized by him.
Pivots of Teresian Christology are the humanity and divinity of Jesus, the Cross and Resurrection, not excluding the other mysteries of his earthly life, and then a remarkable set of "presences" of the Risen Lord— in his Church, in the Eucharist, in the community and in one’s innermost self. For centuries we have limited the words, "Real Presence," to the special presence of the Risen Savior in the Eucharist, under the signs of bread and wine. But recent theology, supported by the Second Vatican Council, has stressed other presences of the Risen Christ that are no less "real presences," albeit of a different kind than the sacramental presence of the Holy Eucharist. Teresa was sensitive to these other real presences: in the Gospel words of Jesus, in the Church, in the community, and profoundly in the inner self of the follower of Christ.
Christ is the place of our encounter with God. For Teresa, the humanity of Jesus, or "the most Sacred Humanity" (her preferred phrase), is no abstraction: the man Jesus of Nazareth is indispensable to the spiritual life at every stage, mystical as well as ascetical. With St. John’s Gospel Teresa writes frequently that Jesus is "the way, the truth and the life"; no stage of the spiritual life, no matter how advanced, can do without these roles of Jesus. Even as a small girl she sought solitude for prayer, and loved the Rosary which her mother had taught her. Devotion to the Mother of Jesus was to remain a strong part of her spirituality, even into the highest stages of her union with God.
When she was an adolescent boarder at the Augustinian convent of Our Lady of Grace, thanks to the good influence of one of the sisters, Teresa began to meditate on Jesus in the Garden of Olives, and to consider a vocation to the religious life. Her pious Uncle Peter gave Teresa some of St. Jerome’s letters, and from Jerome’s love for Jesus she came to appreciate the demands of her own vocation as the call of Christ. In the first years of her religious life at the Incarnation in Avila Teresa regarded her profession as "espousals" with Christ, but a long road still lay ahead. She was already fond of the gospel story of the Samaritan woman at the well seeking the water of life and she had learned to pray "Lord, give me al ways this water." Osuna’s book, The Third Spiritual Alpha bet, exercised a strong influence on her; through reading Osuna she discovered the true vocation of prayer. She experienced the prayer of quiet and of union. For Teresa, that in fused contemplation was the work of Christ dwelling within her. Her advice to beginners was to start with the life of Christ.
At her father’s death the Dominican Vin cent Barron, who had been her father’s confessor, was also, she writes, "of the very greatest help" to her and under his guidance she took up again the way of prayer, never again to abandon it. A third and famous "conversion" in her life occurred in Lent, 1554, before an image of Christ in his Passion (most likely an Ecce Homo), as she describes wonderfully in chapter 9 of her Life.
It can be said that from her first visions of Christ Teresa enjoyed his presence almost constantly; she writes (of the sixth dwelling place) of the Lord walking by her side, not in any sensible way, but in her words, "this vision comes in another unexplainable, more delicate way" that "is so certain and leaves much certitude ... an intellectual vision." The locutions of Teresa were also strongly Christological; they often came prior to the visions and prepared the way for them. She experienced these for the first time in the years1554-1556 and they continued almost without interruption for the rest of her life.
Throughout her life the words of Jesus strengthened Teresa. The incident in Chapter 25 of her Life is familiar. She was in a state of exhaustion when she heard words that brought total tranquillity: "Be not afraid, daughter, it is I and I will not forsake thee; fear not." The effect was instantaneous; she received fortitude and courage, and conviction and tranquility and light, so that in a moment she found her "soul transformed and ... would have maintained against the whole world that this was the work of God... What a powerful lord! He gives not only counsel but solace. His words are deeds. See how he strengthens our faith and how our love increases." She recalled how the command of Christ stilled the waves.
Later in L, 38 she recalls how when she was at prayer the Lord sometimes spoke to her of her faults but also of the favors he had already given her. On one such occasion she saw the Sacred Humanity in far greater glory than ever before, "a most clear and wonderful representation of the Sacred Humanity in the bosom of the Father," a good example of how even in her visions of the Trinity she did not lose the sense of the humanity of Jesus.
For Teresa the words of Jesus were also "deeds"; having said this, she added, "See how he strengthens our faith and how our love increases!" She saw all the enterprises to which the words of Jesus directed her as bearing the seal of Christ. In the convents she founded she saw the mysteries of Christ renewed, from the Holy Family at Bethlehem to the apostolic community in the Cenacle. When Teresa speaks of the "humanity" of Jesus she intends the whole Jesus Christ, including all aspects of his human life, crowned by the Resurrection.
The heart of Teresa’s teaching is prayer: this is her role as "Doctor of the Church." We might note Pope Paul VI’s words on September 27, 1970, at the ceremony proclaiming her the first woman Doctor of the Church: "We have conferred — rather — We have acknowledged — St. Teresa of Jesus’ title of Doctor of the Church." In the same homily the Pope spoke of Teresa’s "human vitality and spiritual vivacity."2 The title of a modern study about her, I Want to See God (by Fr. Marie-Eugène, O.C.D.) describes well her life of prayer and her teaching about it. For Teresa to be recollected meant to be immersed in Christ; to pray meant to be transformed in Jesus the Lord, the whole human personality caught up in Christ.
Dwelling Places
Even in the first dwelling place of C Teresa is conscious of the presence of Jesus; already, in L, 40 she had written of Jesus as present in the innermost recesses of the soul. In the first dwelling place the fountain of water is symbolic of Christ: "the streams that flow from a crystal-clear fount ... this fount of life, in which the soul is planted like a tree." Throughout her writings water symbolism is associated with Jesus— in The Way of Perfection but frequently elsewhere also, often in connection with the Samaritan woman who unknowingly was thirsting for the living water. Light is another favorite symbol for Christ; he is the water that satisfies, the light that illuminates. Self-understanding, dominant note of the first dwelling place, is achieved through Christ; he is the mirror. We note again the strong anthropology of Teresa’s Christology. She would have cheered the statement of the Second Vatican Council, "Only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light" (Gaudium et Spes, no. 22).
Central to the second dwelling place is the following of the Crucified One. The Christian must be immersed in the Passion and Resurrection. We must look at Jesus and reflect on what we owe him and the death he suffered for us. For Teresa, "looking on Jesus" means "looking on him in faith." It is much more, for there is mutual regard, as Teresa put it in L, 13: "If a person is able he should occupy himself in looking at Christ who is looking at him, and he should speak, and petition, and humble himself, and delight in the Lord’s presence..." According to contemporary exegetes, the New Testament phrase, "looking on Jesus," is to be taken eschatologically, that is, for faith in the glorified Christ. It means contemplating the glory of Christ the Savior, and work of the Holy Spirit, a contemplation in faith and love, as in the statement from the prophet Zechariah that the Evangelist John applies to the Calvary scene, "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced," words that mean the loving contemplation of the followers of Christ.
In dwelling place three, speaking of the rich young man who turned away from the Lord, Teresa reminds her daughters that the Lord is calling them to be perfect, and "He must give the reward in conformity with the love we have for him." The final stage of the ascetic life is reached in the third dwelling place. There is no hint of gnostic self-purification; the emphasis is on the imitation of Christ, especially in his passion. As she stated in her L, let people meditate on other subjects too, if they are so inclined, on hell or heaven, on death, on God’s forgiveness. All very admirable, she adds, "provided one does not fail to meditate often upon the passion and the life of Christ, which are, and have always been, the source of everything that is good."3
The prayer of recollection or the prayer of quiet takes place in the fourth dwelling place. Here the soul hears the soft whistle of the Good Shepherd. The whole human being is anointed in intellectual and affective faculties by meeting Jesus Christ. God makes himself present in Christ. The shepherd’s gentle call pulls the sheep away from other attractions. There is an intuitive and joyful understanding of the mystery of Christ, preparing the will for union with him and making his presence felt. Working again with the imagery of water Teresa explains that in this prayer of quiet the soul is enlarged like a marvelous fountain whose capacity increases to accommodate the greater flow of water.
In the fifth dwelling place all the powers of the soul are captivated and absorbed by the presence of God. According to Teresa,"The Lord doesn’t have to grant us great delights for this union; sufficient is what he has given us in his Son, who would teach us the way." Teresa’s good sense appears again when she notes that being conformed to the will of God does not mean she would not feel sorrow at the death of her father or brother, or that she suffers trials and illness happily. With equal directness she gets to the heart of holiness: "Here in our religious life the Lord asks of us only two things: love of His Majesty and love of our neighbor. These are what we must work for. By observing them with perfection, we do his will and so will be united with him."
The silkworm metaphor enters in the fifth dwelling place— the silkworm that changes into a butterfly. The cocoon or the little "house" that the silkworm spins is Christ; in Teresa’s words, "our life is hidden in Christ or in God (both are the same) ... our life is Christ." For Teresa contemplation is not an escape from the body, not evasion, but the concentration of all the faculties on the person of the Risen Jesus.
In the description of the sixth dwelling place, after announcing the theme of the espousals, Teresa devotes the balance of the chapter to Jesus Christ. It is also in this section of C that Teresa comments that "to always withdraw from corporeal things and be enkindled in love is the trait of angelic spirits, not of those who live in mortal bodies," hence, she says, she cannot imagine what souls are thinking of when they claim they cannot think about the Passion, or still less about the Blessed Virgin and the saints. Teresa says of such people, "... they just don’t understand and they will do harm to themselves and to others."
In characteristically warm fashion she comments, "Life is long, and there are in it many trials, and we need to look at Christ our model, how he suffered them, and also at his apostles and saints, so as to bear these trials with perfection. Jesus is too good a companion for us to turn away from him and his most blessed Mother, and he is very pleased that we grieve over his sufferings even though we sometimes leave aside our own consolation and de light."4 The comment of Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., is, "The purification of the person is realized not merely through the sufferings inherent to the human condition but especially through contact with the person of Christ in his humanity and divinity."5
In L, 22, 5, looking back on her prayer experience, Teresa wrote, "Who can there be, like myself, so miserably proud, that when he has labored all his life long over every imaginable kind of penance and prayer and suffered every kind of persecution, he does not count himself very wealthy and abundantly rewarded if the Lord allows him to stand with St. John at the foot of the Cross? I cannot imagine how it can enter anyone’s head not to be contented with this..." Not that Teresa ever lost sight of the glorified Christ— as in the brilliant passage that continued immediately after the words just quoted:
If our nature or health doesn’t allow us to think always about the Passion, since to do so would be arduous, who will prevent us from being with him in his risen state? We have him so near in the Blessed Sacrament, where he is already glorified and where we don’t have to gaze upon him as being so tired and worn out, bleeding, wearied by his journeys, persecuted by those for whom he did so much good, and not believed in by the apostles. Certainly there is no one who can endure thinking all the time about the many trials he suffered. Behold him here without suffering, full of glory, before ascending into heaven, strengthening some, encouraging others, our companion in the most Blessed Sacrament; it doesn’t seem it was in his power to leave us for even a moment... The Lord helps us, strengthens us, and never fails; he is a true friend... God desires that if we are going to please him and receive his great favors, we must do so through the most Sacred Humanity of Christ, in whom he takes his delight. Many, many times have I perceived this truth through experience. The Lord has told it to me. I have definitely seen that we must enter by this gate, if we desire his sovereign Majesty to show us great secrets.6
It is significant in Teresa that even with respect to the sufferings of Jesus, to which she was always most sensitive, there is always a clear sense of the Resurrection. We who live in the recovered aura of the restored Easter Vigil and the rediscovered saving significance of the Resurrection must marvel yet again at the depth of St. Teresa’s grasp of the unity of the Paschal Mystery, as in the L, 29, 4:
Almost invariably the Lord showed himself to me in his resurrection body, and it was thus, too, that I saw him in the Host. Only occasionally, to strengthen me when I was in tribulation, did he show me his wounds, and then he would appear sometimes as he was on the Cross and sometimes as in the garden. On a few occasions I saw him wearing the crown of thorns and sometimes he would also be carrying the Cross— because of my necessities, as I say, and those of others— but always in his glorified flesh.
In the sixth dwelling place the soul relives the biblical dialogue of love between God and his people, in preparation for the definitive transformation into Jesus Christ. The desire to see God, to enter into contact with the absolute which is the patrimony of every rational creature, is converted in Teresa’s doctrine into the necessity of seeing Jesus, meeting with him, speaking with him, for he is the living expression of God for us. For St. Teresa the human situation was openness to God, the God who comes to us in Christ Jesus. In the final seventh dwelling place Teresa finds St. Paul’s words realized, "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain," and "He that is joined or united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him." (Phil 1:21, 1 Cor 6:17) She understands both Pauline quotations as throwing light on the union of the spiritual marriage. "The soul can say these words (that is, the words of St. Paul) now because this state is the place where the little butterfly we mentioned dies, and with the greatest joy because its life is now Christ. And that its life is Christ is understood better with the passing of time by the effects this life has."7 The process silkworm-cocoon-butterfly serves as an image of the whole adventure of the interior castle. The story has two stages linked by a transition. The inner movement toward God begins in earnest as the fully-grown silkworm begins its cocoon; there in the dark cocoon the interior process of transformation occurs, just as in the second stage of the castle journey; and Teresa reminds her readers what an intense effort the weaving of the cocoon requires. In the recent book by my confrere, John Welch, Spiritual Pilgrims: Carl Jung and Teresa of Avila, Teresa’s butterfly image is presented as an image of healing, with remarkable likeness to Jung’s understanding of symbols and their importance for psychic wholeness and the resolution of conflict between the ego and self. According to Fr. Welch, "the complete image of the silkworm-cocoon-butterfly is a representative of a uniting symbol."8 Teresa likely saw in this image an expression of experiences of transformation; she uses the image to describe the effects of union with God. "The butterfly symbolizes the paschal mystery as well as psychic growth."9 Entering into the dying and rising of Christ we enter into union with God. the Lord’s words are effective, bringing light and peace, as Teresa wrote, "So, too, with the Lord’s words to the glorious Magdalene that she go in peace."10
The Christian images Teresa used prepared her to be open to the transforming experiences that occurred to her on her journey through the castle. Even in the loftiest stages Teresa warns against jettisoning the Christian images of faith. When she wrote that God wants us to ask creatures who it is who made them, she was defending symbolism.
Christ Her Master
Christ is the teacher on Teresa’s way of perfection. She tells us in her L that much of what she wrote was not out of her own head, but she was told it by "this heavenly Master of mine." Like St. Paul she is careful to distinguish her own views from the Lord’s, although like St. Paul she would not have hesitated to say she felt she had the mind of Christ, who was acting from within her. Her great love for the Scriptures (although since no vernacular translations were permitted and she did not know Latin she had to take her knowledge of the Bible from the portions incorporated in the Divine Office and quoted in other books) sprang from her conviction that she found Christ revealed in word and deed in the Scriptures. She constantly checked her own experience in prayer against biblical parallels. In her thought Christ is master doubly— from without, through the Bible and the Church, from within through the direct and personal experience of his mystery. Jesus is both the master and the object of prayer; successive degrees of prayer are progressively more profound meetings with Jesus.
As she says in L, 25, 13: "from what I see and know through experience, a locution bears the credentials of being from God if it is in conformity with Sacred Scripture." When she consulted theologians she held them as spokesmen "for what the Church holds," as experts "in the truths of Sacred Scripture." Theologians and preachers were for her the ecclesiastical arm rather than the secular arm of the Church, and to this arm rather than to the secular arm she looked for deliverance from the threat of the Reformation that was raging beyond the borders of Spain. The little groups of women in her convents would be friends of the Lord, following the evangelical counsels, living the life of prayer, backing up the preachers and theologians in defense of the Church; the lives of the nuns would be for the Church, in the service of Christ.
Yet women were held particularly prone to false mysticism. With a shift of ground as quick as her woman’s intuition and as sharp as her wit Teresa turns the mistrust of women into an argument on behalf of mental prayer. Relaying some typical objections from those who were skeptical about convents of women dedicated to lives of prayer Teresa summarized, "... it’s harmful to virtue; it’s not for women, for they will be susceptible to illusions; it’s better they stick to their sewing; they don’t need these delicacies; the Our Father and the Hail Mary are sufficient."11 Turning the tables, Teresa agreed that the Our Father and the Hail Mary were indeed sufficient, so long as they were properly prayed, and that meant mental prayer. She never achieved the commentary on the Hail Mary she had projected, although a good commentary could be pieced together from her many reflections on Our Lady. The W does include her famous commentary on the Our Father, which has taken its place among the classic interpretations.
Without downplaying vocal prayer Teresa insists strongly on mental prayer. Defending its necessity she explains enthusiastically, "Hold fast, daughters, for they cannot take from you the Our Father and the Hail Mary." The hit was scored! In the Valladolid manuscript of the W the censor’s comment is still to be seen in the margin, "It seems she is reprimanding the Inquisitors for prohibiting books on prayer."12 And indeed in 1559 the list of forbidden books put out by the Grand Inquisitor (Ferdinand de Valdés) included many books on prayer that he thought might harm simple souls. The prohibition became blessing, as Teresa explains in her L, 26: "When a great many books written in Spanish were taken from us and we were forbidden to read them, I was very sorry..." Her obedience brought a quick reward: "Then the Lord said to me, ‘Be not distressed, for I will give thee a living book’... the Lord showed me so much love and taught me by so many methods, that I have had very little need of books— indeed, hardly any. His Majesty himself has been to me the Book in which I have seen what is true..."13
The Our Father
Teresa’s approach to the Our Father begins with active recollection. Turning to the indwelling God is the foundation of prayer life and Christian life. All Christian life is simply entering into deeper union with the in dwelling Trinity; the greater the union the more fruitful the apostolate. Teresa describes active recollection, "the soul collects its faculties together and enters within itself to be with its God." God is near; "he never takes his eyes off you... who can keep you from turning the eyes of your soul toward this Lord?" Her method is one of presence, as she puts it, "being fully present to God in our prayer, for he is fully present to us at all times... I’m not asking you to do anything more than look at him."14 This prayer of active recollection, accompanying vocal prayer, disposes one for contemplative prayer, for the divine Master comes to teach and to give the prayer of quiet. "Sisters, out of love for the Lord, get used to praying the Our Father with this recollection, and you will see the benefit before long..." Yet she also warns the sisters that not all will enjoy contemplation; it is not necessary for salvation. But recollection does dispose one for contemplation. Of the prayer of quiet she writes, "The Lord puts the soul at peace by his presence, as he did for the just Simeon, so that all the faculties are calmed."15 Such souls see that "they are within the palace, near the King, and they see that he is beginning to give them here his kingdom."
With Jesus teaching us to pray we discover new depths to the Our Father. "Certainly," writes Teresa, "it never entered my mind that this prayer contained so many deep secrets, for now you have seen the entire spiritual way contained in it, from the beginning stages until God engulfs the soul and gives it to drink abundantly from the fount of living water, which he said was to be found at the end of the way."16
"Hallowed be your name; your kingdom come within us." Teresa comments on these phrases to explain how vocal prayer can lead to pure contemplation, using the example of an elderly nun who used to spend several hours reciting a certain number of Our Fathers in memory of the times Our Lord shed his blood. She came to Teresa, quite upset she could only pray vocally; Teresa was able to assure her "that though she was tied to the Our Father she experienced pure contemplation and that the Lord was raising her up and joining her with himself in union..."17 And then there is a side remark, a sally typical of Teresa’s delightful style, "So I praised the Lord and envied her for her vocal prayer. If this account is true, as it is, those of you who are the enemies of contemplatives should not think that you are free from being a contemplative if you recite your vocal prayers as they should be recited, with a pure conscience."18
On "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" Teresa stresses we should not say the words unless we mean them. The Jesus who taught us this prayer also exemplified it. "Consider that Jesus acts here as our ambassador and that he has desired to intervene between us and his Father, and at no small cost of his own. It would not be right for us to fail to do what he has offered on our behalf; if we don’t want to do it we shouldn’t say these words... Oh, what a great loss there is when we do not carry out what we offer to the Lord in the Our Father."19
"Do you want to know how the Father answers those who say these words [thy will be done...] to him sincerely? Ask his glorious Son, who said them while praying in the garden. Since they were said with such determination and complete willingness, see if the Father’s will wasn’t done fully in him through the trials, sorrows, injuries, and persecutions he suffered until his life came to an end through death on a Cross."20
"Give us this day our daily bread" reminds Teresa of the Eucharist. The love and courage of Jesus bring us strength in our cowardice and weakness not just once but every day; that is why the Lord resolved to remain with us in the Blessed Sacrament. "His Majesty gave us... the manna and nourishment of his humanity that we might find him at will and not die of hunger, save through our own fault. In no matter how many ways the soul may desire to eat, it will find delight and consolation in the most Blessed Sacrament."21 When Teresa heard people say they would have liked to live when Christ walked the earth she used to laugh to herself, for she wondered what more they wanted when in the Blessed Sacrament they had the Lord just as truly present as he was then.
The living faith which was our Lord’s gift to Teresa led to deep faith in the Eucharist, even to the healing of bodily ills, as she personally experienced. After all, she writes, "Now, then, if when he went about in the world the mere touch of his robes cured the sick, why doubt, if we have faith, that miracles will be worked while he is within us, and that he will give what we ask of him, since he is within our house. His Majesty is not accustomed to paying poorly for his lodging if the hospitality is good."22
At the end of the chapters on the Our Father she alludes to a popular Spanish spectacle in order to show that prayer is a safe road:
Unless it is very much due to their own fault, souls who practice prayer walk so much more securely than those who take another road. They are like those in the stands watching the bull in comparison with one who is right in front of its horns. I have heard this comparison, and it seems to be true to the letter... Prayer is a safe road; you will be more quickly freed from temptation when close to the Lord than when far. Beseech him and ask him to deliver you from evil as you do so often each day in the Our Father.23
Encouraging her sisters to serve God joyfully, without constraint, she recommends love and fear of God, calling them signs that even the blind can see. Love and fear of God "are like two fortified castles from which one can wage war on the world and the devils."
Teresa experienced and described the virtue of faith almost entirely in reference to Christ, contemplated in prayer, seen in visions, heard in locutions. She is describing herself when she writes in C of the person who was praying before the crucifix, deeply afflicted she had nothing to offer to God, nothing to give up for him. "The Crucified himself in consoling her told her he had given her all the sufferings and trials he had undergone in his passion so that she could have them as her own to offer his Father." The reason God grants great favors is to fortify human weakness. "His Majesty couldn’t grant us a greater favor than to give us a life that would be an imitation of the life his beloved Son lived."
Titles for Jesus
I would like to end this study with five favorite titles Teresa used for Jesus: son, teacher, bridegroom, king and judge. All five are professions of faith. It was during the sixteenth century that Louis of León, O.S.A. ( d. 1591), an early biographer of St. Teresa, wrote his book, The Names of Christ, although it was not known to her.24 It has become common in the twentieth century to approach Christology through the New Testament titles for Jesus; here again the theology of Teresa proves its lasting value. The titles of Teresa all contain a strong saving sense "for us and for our salvation."
The title "Son" looks above all to the Incarnation. Along with the eternal relationship of the Son to the Father in the Holy Trinity there is the temporal, yet now everlasting relationship of Jesus to the Father in loving obedience, and his relationship to us as Savior, fulfilling the loving designs of the Father on our behalf. An example is from the first line on the Our Father in W: "Our Father who art in heaven. O my Lord, how you do show yourself to be the Father of such a Son; and how your Son does show himself to be the Son of such a Father."
"Teacher" is very common in Teresa. Jesus teaches us the way to God, indeed he is the Way. Not only does Jesus teach doctrine, he is the truth. "What wisdom will be attributed to the man who rejoiced at being accounted mad, since madness was attributed to him who is wisdom itself. Alas, alas... no longer are there any whom men account mad because they see them perform the heroic deeds proper to true lovers of Jesus Christ."25 The wisdom of God comes to us through the man Jesus: "The Lord himself says that he is the way; the Lord says also that he is the light and that no one can go to the Father but through him, and anyone who sees me sees my Father."
On the role of Christ as "bridegroom" Teresa had much to say in her reflections on the Canticle of Canticles (or Song of Songs). She saw this great Old Testament love poem completely centered on Christ. Christian life is a nuptial event, and among the followers of Christ no one illustrates this better than the Mother of Jesus. "O blessed Lady, how perfectly we can apply to you what takes place between God and the bride according to what is said in the Song of Songs."26 These words are Teresa’s commentary on the line, "The king brought me into the wine cellar and set charity to order within me..." In the same book she writes of the divine intoxication of the Samaritan woman who went shouting through the streets after meeting Christ at the well of living water.
In Teresa’s use of the word "king," grandeur and dignity combine with proximity and closeness. The kingship of Christ has aspects of both suffering and joy, passion and exaltation. "His Majesty" is a very frequent phrase for the Lord, a phrase filled with tenderness. We who live in a democratic (republican?) country and in the late twentieth century may find such a title as His Majesty much too monarchical, but it was well-suited to the Spain of Philip II and in Teresa’s use takes on a most amazing tenderness, similar to the Psalms and the Song of Songs. In the sixth dwelling place she writes, "His Majesty, as one who knows our weakness, enables the soul through (these) afflictions ... to have the courage to be joined with so great a Lord and to take him as its spouse."
Finally, Jesus is "judge," again with a marvelous blend of distance and nearness. The only fear that thought of Jesus as judge should bring, writes Teresa, is the fear of not being faithful in love. "May it please His Majesty to give us his love before he takes us out of this life, for it will be a great thing at the hour of death to see that we are going to be judged by the one whom we have loved above all things... It will not be like going to a foreign country but like going to our own, because it is the country of one whom we love so much and who loves us."27
Conclusion
St. Augustine once wrote, "Too late, Lord, have I loved thee." To a degree, I felt tempted to say to St. Teresa, "Too late, Mother Teresa, have I found you," but now, thanks to the necessity of preparing this study, I have learned far more about the great lady of Spain than I ever knew before. I now have a better understanding of my beloved elder sister in Carmel than ever before, my brilliant sibling in the family of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, humorous and tender writer, tireless traveler and reformer, loving disciple of Jesus Christ, Son of God, King, Teacher, Judge, her beloved Bridegroom.
Fr. Eamon Carroll is in the department of theology at Loyola University in Chicago. This paper is reprinted from the Carmelite Studies Centenary of St. Teresa (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1984) with the author’s permission.
Notes
1. As I acknowledge the debt I owe to the authors whose works I now wish to list I am reminded of the comment of the Canadian classicist and humorist Stephen Leacock: "We writers all act and react on one another; and when I see a good thing in another man’s book I react on it at once."
In the first place enormous gratitude is owed to Secundino Castro, Cristología Teresiana (Madrid: Editorial de Espiritualidad, 1978). Readers familiar with Castro’s study will notice how much in debt I am to him, and his work has been saluted by such Teresian scholars as Tomás Alvarez.
See Tomás Alvarez, "Humanité du Christ: L’ecole carmélitaine," Dictionaire
de Spiritualité, 7, cols. 1096-1110; also "Jesucristo en la experiencia
de Santa Teresa," Monte Carmelo, 88 91980), 333-65; and A. Moreno,
"St. Teresa: Contemplation and the Humanity of Christ,’ Review for Religious,
38 (1979), 912-23.
2. Pope Paul VI, "St. Teresa of Avila: The Message of Prayer," The Pope
Speaks, 15 (1970), 218-22.
3. L, 13, 13.
4. C, 6, 7, 13.
5. Kavanaugh, Introduction to C, p. 276.
6. L, 22, 6.
7. C, 7, 2, 5.
8. John Welch, Spiritual Pilgrims: Carl Jung and Teresa of Avila (New York: Paulist
Press, 1982), p. 153.
9. Ibid., p. 141.
10. C, 7, 2, 7.
11. W, 21, 2.
12. Ibid., 21, 8 and Kavanaugh’s note 8, p. 468.
13. L, 26, 5.
14. W, 26, 3.
15. Ibid., 31, 2.
16. Ibid., 42, 5.
17. Ibid., 30, 7.
18. Ibid.
19. W, 32, 3 and 4.
20. Ibid., 32, 6.
21. Ibid., 34, 2.
22. Ibid., 34, 8.
23. Ibid., 39, 7.
24. Louis of León, The Names of Christ, trans. Edward Schuster (Saint Louis: B.
Herder Co., 1955). "Cross and Crown Series of Spirituality," 6.
25. L, 27, 14.
26. Meditations on the Song of Songs, 6, 8.
27. W, 40, 8.
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